Washington D.C., Mar 30, 2009 / 04:30 am
Ten members of the President’s Council on Bioethics have issued a statement seeking to “clarify” President Barack Obama’s comments on human embryonic stem cell research. The council members said Obama’s policy is “a step backward” because it fails to reconcile the needs of research and moral concerns.
Noting that new forms of stem cell research do not involve killing human embryos, the council members also warned that the president’s policy could permit funding for human cloning while requiring that clones be killed.
The ten members who signed the March 25 statement were Gilbert Meilaender, Paul McHugh, Benjamin Carson, Nicholas Eberstadt, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Alfonso Gómez-Lobo, William Hurlbut, Donald Landry, Peter Lawler, and Diana Schaub.
The members said that President Obama made an inaccurate characterization when he said his executive order lifted the ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research (ESCR).